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  1. #1

    So... A vent about the multiplayer side and the lack of seriousness of Ubisoft/Devs

    Hello,

    I fully understand that the developers won't read this and even if they do, they won't care. Still, I need to vent

    I bought Anno 2070 and Heroes of Might and Magic VI somewhere in 2012 and... I regretted it shortly after. Ubisoft servers were so bad that during my free time I wasn't allowed to play at the games I legally paid for. And at this time, if you were disconnected from the servers, you were just ejected from the game you were playing like a disgusting villain. The situation was so bad that I was advised to use a crack so I could play, which was ridiculous. I was so annoyed that one day I stopped trying, and promised to never buy a Ubisoft game ever.

    Then happen April 2020. Some friends wanted to try out Anno 2070 as it was ridiculously cheap and start a multiplayer game, because well... nothing better to do after all. And maybe the servers are better today ?

    ...

    Ah ah ah...

    My friends were fools. And I was a foolish fool for foolishly attempting it.

    Granted, the LOGIN server is fully cooperative. I can play with the ark bonuses/storage and being disconnected isn't a trouble, it doesn't even last. This is great, seriously.

    Also, once the multiplayer game is started, it is very stable...

    ...as long as we can start it.

    The CONTACTS server -if there is one- is full of ****. Unfortunately, without its cooperation we are unable to launch any multiplayer games. If you are not considered as > FULLY < logged for EVERY contacts you want to play with, you CANNOT launch/join a multiplayer game with them.

    By > FULLY < logged, I mean being visible in the Contacts list of all players you want to play, and be able to communicate with anyone of them in a personal Chat window (the Lobby Chat doesn't matter).

    Any player who aren't > FULLY < logged can be considered as "faulty players" for the rest of my vent. The issue is that there is no parameter on the player side that decide the server to consider you as a "faulty player". It is purely random and NOT permanent, the server decides that someone have to be an OUTCAST for no reason and the timeout of this status is like 15 to 30 MINUTES, whatever the amount of relogs you will do.

    Also, you can appear as logged in the Contacts List of SOME friends, but NOT for some others. Meaning that you are not > FULLY < logged.

    A "faulty player" has a unique characteristic : communication in the chat window to a > FULLY < logged player will be only ONE-SIDED.

    Yes : to check if you are EFFECTIVELY > FULLY < logged, send/receive some words in a Chat window to others players is the most efficient method. If you can send AND receive from one specific player, it is the confirmation that this player will be OK, that they will receive the invitation to join a game, etc. We validate this principle by numerous tests.

    But the "faulty" players will be able to ONLY RECEIVE the messages we will send to them. They are UNABLE to SEND any response. More exactly, they wrote something, the game don't say that it failed to send it, but we still received nothing from them. Vocal communication confirmed this.

    Even funnier, if said "faulty player" log out, the game may sometimes show him as still logged to everyone else. Open/Close the Contacts List is sometimes not enough, we have to remove them and re-add them to get a refresh of their status.

    As we have some basis in network management, we tried everything possible to make it work. AV/Firewall, port-forwarding, version check, Proxys, SSH tunneling/VPN, Hosts, DMZ, etc. We even tried stupid things like waiting 10 minutes between the login of each player so the CONTACTS server will accept us, as we thought that the poor sod was too tired... Yes, we had too much time in our hands. So we did play... not without wasting in the lobby nearly HALF the time we really played (± 3 hours lobby for 8 hours of gaming on 2 days).

    Still, that doesn't mean that the player side isn't somewhere at fault, right ?

    Wrong.

    As there was a patch recently to remove the DRM part of this game and that there isn't a changelog anywhere, we hoped that maybe something was done for that too.

    So we retried today only for the TECHNICAL/RESEARCH aspect (we are masochists), but 2 players were on the same local network/home this time. This is when we realize that the CONTACTS server is the problem, because sometimes it would be Player #1 who will be "faulty" whatever the number of restarts of the game he did, sometimes it would be Player #2. At FOUR occasions we managed to start a new game ! ... without doing anything justifying it ... And once they restart Anno 2070, the "faulty" virus can happen... So the issue is not on the player's side. We were even lucky to be able to launch it 4 times during 2 hours of test, it is way more than during the Lockdown.

    Within a decent amount of relogs, I was a "faulty player" too at a few occasion.

    « The server is trolling us ! » said Player #2. Yeah right... it is like the server decided to play /r/fuckyouinparticular game.

    There is no way to solve the issue, it is purely on the server side.

    Player #1 said that we should try with Anno 1800, but for the moment I am more in the "Ubisoft can kiss my ***" mode. Because seriously, as the issue still exists today, that shows the lack of seriousness of Ubisoft/Bluebyte and so I don't see why it would be better in the recent release. After all, we all know how developers are, reusing bad code if it can make their work easier... It would be OK if the game costed 5 € as it wouldn't be a loss compared to the risk to be fooled again, but the game is not at this price.

    I won't be able to trust any product coming from Ubisoft as long that this issue with Anno 2070 isn't corrected.

    Well, at least it spares me money as it will obviously never be the case
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  2. #2
    I feel you bud. This game all those years ago actually used to work fairly well with my friend, we were able to run multiplayer games quite easily

    these days when I tried to get my other friends in with lure of dirt cheap prices? still shoddy as heck servers that barely function at all. And its never going to get fixed until they shut them down in a few years and the game gets shoved to the wayside to be added to the list of "possible history editions"
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